Mangesh Devidas. Sadafale

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jun 15, 2020

2018008140 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 15, 2020)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www.uspto.gov
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
14/702,903 05/04/2015 Mangesh Devidas Sadafale TI-71049A 1017
23494 7590 06/15/2020
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED
P O BOX 655474, MS 3999
DALLAS, TX 75265
EXAMINER
LI, TRACY Y
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2487
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/15/2020 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address(es):
uspto@ti.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte MANGESH DEVIDAS SADAFALE
Appeal 2018-008140
Application 14/702,903
Technology Center 2400
Before JEFFREY S. SMITH, IRVIN E. BRANCH, and
DAVID J. CUTITTA II, Administrative Patent Judges.
BRANCH, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE1
Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant2 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1–4, 7–13, and 16–20. Appeal Br. 3
(“The only ground of rejection for review is the rejection of claims 1, 10 and

1 We refer to the Specification, filed May 4, 2015 (“Spec.”); Final Office
Action, mailed March 31, 2017 (“Final Act.”); Appeal Brief, filed March 30,
2018 (“Appeal Br.”); Examiner’s Answer, mailed June 8, 2018 (“Ans.”);
and Reply Brief, filed August 9, 2018 (“Reply Br.”).

2 We use the word Appellant to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.42. Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Texas Instruments
Incorporated of Dallas, Texas, United States of America. Appeal Br. 2.
Appeal 2018-008140
Application 14/702,903
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17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 . . . .”).3 Claims 1–20 are pending, of which
claims 5, 6, 14, and 15 have been indicated to recite allowable subject
matter. See Final Act. 1. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
According to Appellant, the claims relate to “filtering video data.”
Spec. ¶ 2. Claim 1, reproduced below with disputed limitations emphasized
in italics, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A system for reducing blocking artifacts, the system
comprising one or more processors:
a deblocking module executing on the one or more
processors, the deblocking module comprising a luma
deblocking filter and a chroma deblocking filter configured to
filter an edge between adjacent blocks associated with video
data, wherein a block of the adjacent blocks corresponds to one
of a prediction block and a transform block; and
a processing module executing on the one or more
processors and communicatively associated with the deblocking
module, the processing module operable to configure at least one
filter coefficient corresponding to the chroma deblocking filter
based on one or more filter coefficients corresponding to the
luma deblocking filter, and the processing module being
configured to cause the chroma deblocking filter to filter the edge
based on the at least one filter coefficient.

3 Appellant appeals only the rejection of claims 1, 10, and 17. We
summarily affirm the rejections of the unappealed claims.
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REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is:
Name Reference Date
Kanazawa
Sun
He
Fu
US 2006/0078055 A1
US 2006/0126962 A1
US 2008/0069247 A1
US 2011/0274158 A1
Apr. 13, 2006
June 15, 2006
Mar. 20, 2008
Nov. 10, 2011
REJECTIONS
Claims 1–4, 8–13, and 16–20 stand rejected under pre–AIA 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over the combination of He, Sun, and Fu. Final
Act. 3–6.
Claim 7 stands rejected under pre–AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over the combination of He, Sun, Fu, and Kanazawa. Final
Act. 6–7.
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellant’s
arguments. We have considered in this Decision only those arguments
Appellant actually raised in the Briefs. Any other arguments Appellant
could have made but chose not to make in the Briefs are deemed to be
waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv).
Regarding claim 1, Appellant argues as follows:
the Examiner acknowledged that He . . . and Sun . . . fail to
disclose ‘the processing module operable to configure at least
one filter coefficient corresponding to the chroma deblocking
filter based on one or more filter coefficients corresponding to
the luma deblocking filter,’ as recited in pending claim 1, and
turned to Fu . . . in an attempt to cure the deficiency.
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Appeal Br. 6. Appellant then argues that Fu “fails to cure the shortcomings
of He and Sun.” Id.
Appellant’s argument is unpersuasive of error.
As an initial matter, Appellant does not cite—and we cannot find—
the Examiner’s acknowledgment that “He . . . and Sun . . . fail to disclose
‘the processing module operable to configure at least one filter coefficient
corresponding to the chroma deblocking filter based on one or more filter
coefficients corresponding to the luma deblocking filter.’” Rather, with
respect to the argued limitation, the Examiner’s rejection is based on the
combined teachings of He, Sun, and Fu. Final Act. 3–5; see, e.g., id. at 3–4
(“He discloses a system for reducing blocking artifacts [including] a
processing module . . . operable to configure at least one filter coefficient
corresponding to the chroma deblocking filter (e.g.Fig.3; [0030] lines 14-17,
wherein 309 & 311 is the chrome deblocking filters).” The Examiner
concludes as follows:
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in
the art at the time the invention was made having all three of the
references of He, Sun and Fu before him/her, to modify the
system for reducing blocking artifacts disclosed by He to include
the block of the adjacent blocks corresponds to one of a
prediction block of Sun and the chroma deblocking filter based
on one or more filter coefficients corresponding to the luma
deblocking filter of Fu, in order to provide a method of image
block boundary filtering control, as taught by Sun (e.g.[0002])
and allow filtering process to be more flexible and/or localized
processing can be provided, as taught by Fug (e.g.[0004]).
Id. at 5. Accordingly, contrary to Appellant’s contention, the Examiner’s
rejection is not based on Fu alone. One cannot show nonobviousness by
attacking references individually when the rejection is based on a
combination of references. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981).
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Appellant argues specifically that the Examiner erred because the
cited portion of Fu “is referring to adaptive loop filtering, and therefore does
not correspond to a deblocking filter” and does not teach or suggest “the
processing module operable to configure at least one filter coefficient
corresponding to the chroma deblocking filter based on one or more filter
coefficients corresponding to the luma deblocking filter.” Appeal Br. 6.
The Examiner responds by finding as follows:
Fu teaches an adaptive loop filtering (ALF) is used as in-loop
processing in addition to deblocking, and it is often applied after
deblocking of reconstructed video data; because of block-based
processing in the coding system, coding artifacts at and near
block boundaries are more noticeable, such artifacts may
propagate from frame to frame, accordingly, in-loop filtering to
‘deblock’ the artifacts at and near block boundaries has been used
in newer coding systems to alleviate the artifacts and improve
picture quality. Therefore, an adaptive loop filtering (ALF) is a
filter with deblocking function on edge or boundary, such ALF
has been adapted and developed in those widely used video
compression standards like H.264/AVC, High Efficiency Video
Coding (HEVC).
Ans. 8 (citing Fu ¶¶ 3, 28). The Examiner further finds as follows:
Fu teaches, as luma and chroma components of video signal
applying ALF, diamond-shaped filter or another shape filter
would be used and the luma and chroma components share filter
information that consist of filter coefficients, filter control region
partitions, filter selections or filter ON/OFF, filter
characteristics, or a combination of the above information, also
the filter coefficients of the luma filter and chroma filter can be
derived from each other. This means the filter coefficients of
chroma filter is derived from or configured based on the filter
coefficients of luma filter.
Id.
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The Examiner further finds as follows:
Furthermore, He, Sun and Fu, each respectively teaches
processing module. For instance, as stated in [0049], Fu teaches
Digital Signal Processor (DSP) to perform the processing
described herein, computer processor, a digital signal processor,
a microprocessor, or field programmable gate array (FPGA), all
these processors can be configured to perform particular tasks in
video compression.
Id. at 8–9.
Appellant’s specific argument does not persuade us of error for the
reasons stated by the Examiner (Ans. 7–9), which Appellant does not
persuasively rebut. Specifically, Appellant does not address the Examiner’s
finding that “an adaptive loop filtering (ALF) is a filter with deblocking
function on edge or boundary, such ALF has been adapted and developed in
those widely used video compression standards like H.264/AVC, High
Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).” Ans. 8; see Reply Br. 2. Appellant
contends that the cited portions of Fu “refer to adaptive loop filtering (ALF)
and deblocking as two separate and distinct steps” and “refer to adaptive
loop filtering, and therefore do not correspond to a deblocking filter.” Reply
Br. 2. These contentions do not persuade us of error because, even if Fu did
not mention deblocking, the Examiner’s finding that “an adaptive loop
filtering (ALF) is a filter with deblocking function on edge or boundary”
(Ans. 8) is sufficient and unrebutted.
Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1. We also
sustain the rejections of claims 10 and 17, which, although Appellant argues
them separately (see Appeal Br. 6–7), Appellant does not argue the
rejections with particularity.
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DECISION SUMMARY
In sum:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § References  Affirmed Reversed
1–4, 8–13,
16–20
103 He, Sun, Fu 1–4, 8–13,
16–20

7 103 He, Sun, and Fu,
Kanazawa
7
Overall
Outcome:
1–4, 7–13,
16–20

TIME PERIOD FOR RESPONSE
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(1)(iv).
AFFIRMED